Tarzan Director Confirmed

Yates Confirmed For Tarzan

Yates is already meeting with actors for the lead role. He's apparently keen on Tom Hardy.

It feels apposite to make any story link to the US election results this week, to seem extra topical, but if there’s a way to segue from Barack Obama’s trouncing of Mitt Romney to a Tarzan movie then I don’t know it. Something about swing voters, maybe? Let’s move on. Several months back there was a shortlist of directors rumoured to be in the frame to bring Tarzan back to the screen, and now that list has evidently been shortened to one: David Yates.

Yates has been mulling his next directing job since finishing off the Harry Potter franchise in 2011 but, according to Vulture, having now presumably had a really big sleep, he’s ready to head back into the blockbuster fray, again at Warner Bros, the home of Potter. Warner are hoping for a new franchise in the king of the swingers, which filled 10 movies for MGM back in the '30s and '40s. Yates seems a good captain for the ship, being an old hand with the effects business. After filling hours and hours of film with dragons and spells he should have no trouble knocking up a bit of vine swinging and a few bits with monkeys.

The Vulture story says that Yates is already meeting with actors for the lead role. He's apparently keen on Tom Hardy, who I would have thought was a bit on the mature side for the role, and is also talking to True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard, new Superman Henry Cavill and Charlie Hunnam of Sons of Anarchy. All four are used to wandering across screen in less than a loin cloth, so they're already at least half qualified.

Toy Story 3 Writer On Star Wars SequelsThings appear to be going insanely positively on the Star Wars sequels this week. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher have all suggested they might be open to returning to the roles of Luke, Han and Leia, but even better, there’s a terrific writer on board.

George Lucas, god love him, has tons of ideas but putting them into workable dialogue has never been a strong suit. That’s not true of Michael Arndt, who has worked on the likes of Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine and has written treatments for the new Star Wars trilogy. Now, anyone who’s worked at Pixar has to be a good sign for any movie. It’s not yet confirmed whether Arndt will write the screenplays, once he’s done writing the Hunger Games sequels, but a report from Vulture says he’ll be at least among the writers, though Disney has yet to confirm.

The same story says that these treatments are going out to directors including Steven Spielberg, Brad Bird and J.J. Abrams. Now, it’s important to stress at this point that this by no means indicates any of those directors will be working on the next Star Wars, and Star Wars fans have been in this ‘anything’s possible’ position before only to be disappointed, but the temptation to get really, really over-excited is really, really high.

Transformers 4 Just Got Less DepressingIf you are enormously anticipating a fourth Transformers movie then I fundamentally do not understand you, but there is now reason to be hopeful that this may not be the exposition-heavy, enormously long, too un-roboty chore that the last one was. Following what seemed to be an absurd internet rumour about Mark Wahlberg taking over lead duties from Shia LaBoeuf, it has now been confirmed by director Michael Bay that Wahlberg will be doing just that, Bay and Wahlberg having hit it off on the soon-to-be-released Pain and Gain.

Obviously Wahlberg will not be playing the same role as LaBeouf, because that would be like recasting the role of Oliver Twist with a steroidal bear. Wahlberg will instead play an as yet unrevealed role, but his presence instantly gives the impression this will be more action heavy and less filled with people shouting NO NO NO for hours. The fourth Transformers movie will begin filming next spring and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about that.

Counting The Days Until...World War ZThis is awaited more with a sense of hopeful curiosity than wild enthusiasm. Max Brooks' episodic zombie chronicle would be a tough adaptation in the best of circumstances but the Brad Pitt-starring production has endured one of the most beleaguered shoots in memory, with several breaks and multiple re-shoots. The first trailer looks... actually pretty great.

If You Watch One Film This Week, Make It...Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Saturday, ITV2, 12am)Shane Black is directing Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man 3, and if it's anywhere near as good as their last film together then we're in for a treat. In an odd play on gumshoe movies of old, Downey Jr plays a thief who finds himself sucked in to solving a mystery. Typically for black, the script is constantly sharp and weirdly funny, squeezed of everything by Downey Jr, Michelle Monaghan and Val Kilmer. Yes, Val Kilmer.